A taste of life! Albenga We found this town by looking on the map, and when the Lonely Planet told us that in the heart of its urban madness we would find a pretty old town, then that’s where we decided to stop for the night.
We set up home at the Camping d’Italy (a very original name, we were to discover later on), and went off in search of the real Italy.
After side-stepping half empty restaurants with delicious looking menus, we finally found ourselves down a side street at the end of a forgotten alley-way.
The buildings were close upon us, their ancient bricks calling out, ‘good food! good food!
And that is where we found the Pizzeria “Puppo”, a family affair built into the bedrock of this town’s social life.
All Albenga was there! People coming in, people coming out, gesticulating talking, exclaiming! Paradise. In the center of it all was Maria Puppo a lovely and lively and energetic woman who, it seems, wrote the book on Farinata, a local dish once reserved for the poor.
Our dinner of 1 farinata, one fish brochette, half a liter of local white wine, one pizza for two (real anchovies!) and to add pleasure to sin, one ice meringue pie flambéed in grape eau de vie ran us 37,000 lire.
The recipe for farinata sounds very simple, and we suspect Maria is hiding something from us. Basically, take a whole lot of chick-pea flower and add water and salt. The quantities will go with Maria to the grave, so you’ve just got to follow your nose.
Pre-heat your wood-burning bread oven which everyone has in their kitchen to 600°C and pour 5mm of the paste into a large metallic pan which you have swathed with olive oil.
Sprinkle with dried rosemary and bake until golden brown.
It goes well with a glass of local red wine we discovered the next day.
The address of these amazing people is Via Torlaro, 20 – Albenga (Sv) and their telephone number is (0182)51.853, but it’s certainly much more fun just to show up without a reservation.
When Maria gets to know you a little better, you get to sit and eat in the family salon near the oven